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Essex
Essex is a talented biotic and a member of Delta Squad, a special forces unit of the Alliance deployed to Fehl Prime in 2185. He has a carefree and easygoing nature, constantly bragging about his biotic abilities and adding to his ever present air of overconfidence. His boasts do have some basis, however, since he is capable of casually dispatching enemies and takes pleasure in doing so. He is attracted to fellow marine Kamille, who constantly snubs his often lecherous intentions. He's prone to making mistakes due to grandstanding but mostly manages to make up for them in one way or another, his excuse being his favorite statement "Just trying to look cool before I die." Mass Effect: Paragon Lost Essex arrives at Fehl Prime with the rest of his squad in 2183 while the colony is under attack from Blood Pack mercenaries. He makes passes at Kamille as the group readies their equipment for the fight, groping her ass and receiving an elbow lock in return. He further mocks Lieutenant James Vega's devotion to Commander Shepard when James openly displays it, only to insinuate later that he was only kidding, and offers himself up as a hero to worship instead. Essex's unit is shot down by the invaders while making a strafing run from the Kodiak drop shuttle. The survivors are rallied by Vega, who assumes command after the CO Captain Toni is incapacitated. The Lieutenant draws up a plan that requires him to face the enemy commander as a distraction while Essex and Kamille sneak up and try to flank the mercenaries. The two marines comply with their orders with little reservation. During the Alliance counter-attack, Essex almost compromises the mission when he claims he won't be needing his rifle and throws it to Kamille. He misaims the throw and the weapon strikes the rock behind her, alerting the Blood Pack to his and Kamille's flanking attempt. He makes up for it by using his biotics to devastate the enemy ranks, shooting blue balls from his palms to all over the place and getting sniper backup from Milque on occasion. His adrenaline rush during the fight almost kills Kamille when a sneaky varren startles him, causing his last biotic shot to be wasted on the creature and sending it flying. The varren lands on Kamille by accident, and Essex is taken down by Brood while rushing to save her. Essex is then repeatedly stamped on in the gut until Vega shoots Brood. Enraged, Essex tries to put the krogan out of his misery but is restrained by Vega, who justifies that he is a prisoner of war. Essex is reprimanded and commended at the same time after the Alliance victory, though he jokingly maintains he took out more targets than Vega did when the subject of medals comes up. Two years later, Fehl Prime has recovered and the Alliance has bolstered the colony's defenses with a heavy anti-ship cannon and military-grade kinetic barriers. Though bored at the lack of any action in the past two years, he airily asserts that his gun and talents are more than adequate for the colony defenses. Despite the fact that Kamille is now in a relationship with Mason, Essex doesn't give up and continues to annoy Kamille with his antics. Captain Toni orders the Delta Squad to investigate a strange jamming signal originating from the colony's outskirts. At the signal's location Essex teams up with Kamille to go south and flank the signal point at Vega's direction. The squad discovers an unknown alien device as its cause; Vega decides it is safest to destroy it and Essex complies with his biotics, much to Treeya the archaeologist's displeasure. While Treeya tries to salvage useful data from the remains of the artifact, the colony comes under attack from the Collectors, who are responsible for a spate of colony disappearances in the Terminus Systems. The squad returns to the colony, gathering intel at first then switching to the offensive when they find out what the invaders are doing to the colonists. Essex takes point during recon and hides out with Kamille when Treeya accidentally dislodges a rock that causes Collectors to come swarming to their location, resuming their path when the Collectors fly off again. Essex vocally makes his vexation clear at the turn of events. On finding out that Collectors can fly, he sarcastically muses that it makes him miss the Blood Pack. On discovering the stunned civilians he's the first to articulate what the squad has been more or less thinking: "What the hell?" And when the plan to strike back is being formulated, he's the first one to suggest using bigger guns to take on the opposition. Vega leads the squad along with Treeya and Messner to the anti-ship cannon to use it to try disabling the Collector ship, with Essex and Kamille standing guard at the facility entrance while Mason and Milque provide distraction and sniper backup, respectively. Essex takes the opportunity to point out that he and Kamille are alone once more, with Kamille rebuffing him once again. The cannon fails to penetrate the ship's kinetic barriers, however, being fired only at half power. The Collector ship destroys the cannon with an eye-shaped defense emplacement and Collector troops start attacking the squad. Essex and Kamille take possession of an aerial tram, catching Treeya and Vega while the two were escaping from the disintegrating cannon tower. Essex and Kamille remain on the tram's roof while the other two get inside, the former staving off the onslaught of airborne enemies with biotics while the latter does so with guns. The Collectors keep coming, however. Kamille, out of thermal clips, is grabbed and carried away by a drone just as Essex was dispensing advice that guns are useless against Seeker Swarms. He was distracted taking out a few headed their way, and could only look on helplessly when he realizes his favorite object of desire was being forcefully spirited away. While retreating to the underground labs, Essex and Vega hold off the attackers till Mason seals off the entrance by causing a cave-in. While waiting for Nicky to finish hacking the door open, Mason inquires about Kamille and Essex guiltily recounts what happened. Mason's outburst at the biotic is stalled, however. The swarms start slipping through the cracks and the arguing two blast frantically at the critters. Knowing how useless guns are against multitudes of the creatures and how he'll have to use biotics to hold the enemy at bay, Essex urges Mason and the others to retreat into the now-open lab. Essex stays behind to cover the group's escape, his favorite phrase about looking cool before dying in mind. Paralyzed but left to his own devices outside the lab, Essex is recovered by his squad soon after and administered a potential antidote for the seeker plague the team found within the lab. The serum fails to show immediate effect, however, and the squad's holdout is attacked by a Praetorian. Essex is left behind, the team thinking he is gone. The Praetorian ignores him in its pursuit of the organics. Astonishingly, Essex recovers and comes to the rescue just in time: while the squad, escaping in a ship, is fighting off the Praetorian in mid-air. Falling into the scene from above, Essex uses his biotics to immobilize the Praetorian while Vega jumps onto it and pumps slugs into it at close range. When it is defeated, Essex catches Vega as he jumps away from the thing and pulls him up to the ledge the biotic landed on. Both rush back to the ship, which incidentally belongs to Brood who is in an uneasy alliance with the squad, to ascertain Nicky's condition after he was stabbed by the Praetorian earlier. Nicky, thinking he's hallucinating, asks everyone if they also see Essex, and Essex confirms that the antidote he found really works, handing out a vial. Nicky passes on soon after, with everyone taking a moment of silence. Vega states that the only real option they have left is to complete the initial objective they had: disable the Collector ship's engines, but from the inside. Milque thinks it's suicide, and Essex concurs with additional justification: even factoring out the Collector ship's eye defenses, they'd never breach its shields. Brood suggests flying straight into an eye, and Vega notes that the krogan maybe on to something no matter how crazy the suggestion sounds. Vega decides to give a rousing speech and offers the remaining members of the group a drink from his flask before executing the plan. Essex drinks first, saying that fumes wafting out from the busted tanks in the area they're in can give them some cover. The Collector ship, starting its ascent to space with the collected colonists, suddenly finds itself an unwanted intrusion in the form of Brood's ship flying towards it. Brood blasts a hole in its side after evading the eye defenses and blunders his way towards the drive core. Armed with heavy weapons from Brood's personal armory, Essex and the others defend Brood's ship from Collector drones, himself having picked an Arc Projector and partnering with Milque at the port side. Before Brood can take out the drive core, however, Messner shoots him in the head, revealing the human's true colors. Without its pilot, Brood's ship crashes and the group is taken prisoner by the Collectors. After Messner forces Treeya away to do his own bidding, Vega recovers from his stasis and takes out the lone guard remaining. Essex and Milque show up soon after, puzzled on the circumstances of their recovery. Vega explains that he spiked the drink they took earlier with the cure. Essex complains that they've got no weapons except for knives and a couple of grenades, and Vega later hands him a power cell for his biotics the dying Brood gave the Lieutenant moments before the two marines appeared. When Essex asks James what's their next move now, the Lieutenant figured he'd use the Collectors' processing system to work to their advantage in synthesizing more antidote and dispersing it to the rest of the colonists. Essex starts spraying the antidote on the room they're in, incidentally strewn with pods including that of April's, complaining how the antidote stinks worse than it tastes. Vega, Milque and Essex board a floating Collector platform after dispersing the cure. On the way to rescuing Treeya, Essex glibly recaps the specifics of the mission to Vega for his opinion, and when Vega replies Essex recognizes how James seems to be taking a page from Shepard's book, phrasing it succinctly: "Save the girl, save the galaxy, go home heroes." Vega and Essex push forward using the locator fix from Treeya's omni-tool while Milque is left behind to pilot a freighter that the Collectors had taken aboard and which Delta Squad can use to escape the ship with the colonists. Essex amplified his biotics with the power cell Brood gave James and uses it to enormous effect when the team comes upon the Collectors holding Treeya hostage. Essex fights the Collectors alone while Vega rushes to save Treeya's pod which was being sucked away into vacuum. Essex holds the Collectors off up until Vega rejoins him, the latter having failed to stop Treeya's pod from spacing and taking a slight beating from Messner afterward. The multilegged Collector boss proves to be a challenge for Essex as it keeps shrugging off every biotic attack while lashing out with its pointy legs at every opportunity. Essex charges up a powerful biotic offensive but is shot down by incoming Collector troops. Despite the setback and thanks to his shields, he gets up and back into the action. However, his overconfidence becomes his undoing when the Collector boss impales him from behind while he's attempting to muster a strike against the newly-emerged threat, swaggering all the while to Vega. Near death, he flares his biotics in a last herculean effort and breaks through his enemy's defenses, defenestrating the Collector after Vega's fire pushes it dangerously backwards to a cliff. Spent, Essex falls to a hero's death with his enemy into the abyss. References Category:Systems Alliance Category:Biotics